I
know! Another gap in posting. But I am back… again!
The
past few weeks have been quite the interesting experience at my job. I’ll have to break this down into two posts
perhaps but I’ll just write about what’s affecting me directly in this entry.
It
actually began several months ago. My
company has decided to change the layout of my department and because of that,
I had to reapply for the same exact position I’ve been in for the previous few
years. Nothing was changing about the
position but because they were redoing the structure of that aspect of the
business, I had to prove my worthiness to stay on (I guess). That was kind of insulting, in my opinion,
but whatever. My supervisor was a good
guy and his manager had known me for most of my career there so it wasn’t as if
I was overly worried about getting hired.
I
go for the interview and a short while later, the manager – let’s call this
person Lester – contacted me to tell me that I would be staying on in the
department but since the reorganization was taking place, there was only one
full-time position available. Doesn’t
sound too bad but there were two full-timers vying for the position – a
coworker and myself. We had been under
the impression that there were two full-time positions but it turns out we were
wrong. Long story short, my coworker
took an assistant supervisor position that was available in the reorganized
department and I took the full-time spot.
That was last August.
My
supervisor, meanwhile, was told he wouldn’t be staying on when they redid the
department and so we got a new supervisor around September of 2013. Besides the changing of the supervisors,
however, nothing changed. My coworker
who got the promotion experienced no change in duties and pay (as far as I
know). It was basically all paperwork.
Fast-forward
to around January and we were told that we would have to re-apply AGAIN for our
spots. Our department would be finally
making the real reorganized structure they had been laying out since last fall:
now there would be different pay structures, different bonuses, different
uniforms, etc., etc. Now our interviews
would be with our new supervisor (who we had only known for a few months and
who came in with his own way of doing things).
There was nothing wrong with the new supervisor but he had more of a
used car salesman mentality and that was different from how we had been trained
to interact with our customers, which seemed to be good enough for our
department to hit our revenue goals for most of my time in the store.
Our
newest part-timer was determined to stay on in the department and began
memorizing everything he/she could. In
just a few short weeks, he/she had absorbed as much product knowledge as he/she
could. It was quite impressive and
he/she blew me away. I, however, had
more of a blasé attitude about the whole thing. I had been there for years and if I got the spot, great. If I didn’t, whatever. I kind of was looking for an excuse to do
something else, I guess.
I
mean, I knew my products and I knew how to talk to customers and I knew how to
fix most of my own issues. In my time
at this job, I even had managers who didn’t want to deal with my department’s
customer issues come to me to resolve problems. I wasn’t the best but I seemed to be fairly relied upon and
looked upon favorably by most of my store’s managers through the years. So, I was probably the most relaxed person
going into these new interviews out of everyone.
(I
should point out that I did need a job but I wouldn’t have been devastated if I
didn’t get hired on.)
The
new interviews were quickly approaching.
Things were getting serious now.
However, even before we were supposed to interview with our supervisor,
my newest part-timer was told that he/she was going to have a second interview
at another store with other department managers and corporate managers. He/she was the only one who was told about
such a meeting. The other full-timer
and myself were not. When we went in
for our first interview nothing was mentioned about a second interview. Other than that, my interview went
swimmingly.
A
week passed with no word on if I got the spot.
I was leaving on a vacation the following week and just before I left
the part-timer told me that he/she got a spot on the new team (which was
awesome for him/her. I was totally
excited for him/her because he/she deserved it.). Yet, no word still about my situation, but I wasn’t completely
stupid. I knew as soon as the
part-timer got their second interview BEFORE even having their first and the
rest of us didn’t receive the same that we didn’t get on the new team.
I
wasn’t upset about the situation but I felt more insulted than anything. For one thing, my supervisor knew I was
going on vacation but I still hadn’t heard any word about the application. Then you schedule a secondary interview with
our coworker before their first interview and you don’t think it’d look
suspicious to the rest of us? Plus,
like I said, we were doing pretty good as a team month after month. We were part of the reason the company felt
they should reorganize the department structure thanks to how good we were
doing. So we’re good enough to warrant
a restructure but not good enough to stay on?
I
go on vacation and while I’m on vacation, I hear that the part-timer was the
only one who got hired on to stay in the department. Not that anyone knew if I got a spot but I was 99% sure I
hadn’t. I came back from vacation and
even though I had been back for three days and the first day of training for
the part-timer was the following day, I still hadn’t heard anything from my
supervisor.
Finally,
I had to TEXT my supervisor to find out.
He told me to call him and over the phone he told me that there
was a lot of talented competition and that I wouldn’t be staying on in the
department. I guess I handled it better
than most since, like I’ve said again and again, I knew this was happening for
weeks by this point and I’m not stupid.
I had been thinking about what I wanted to say to my supervisor but when
the time came to actually receive the news, I thought, “What’s the point?” The decision had been made and my coworker
who hadn’t received a spot had been sticking it to the supervisor enough for
the both of us. It was best to just
move on. And that was that. It was pretty disappointing that my
supervisor couldn’t have the spine to tell me to my face if I got the spot or
not but HEY, that’s the kind of new management my company wanted for the
reorganization. Hope that works out for
them (since that probably didn’t come across in text – that was supposed to be
sarcasm).
Since
then I’ve actually never been happier going into work. There’s a great freedom in knowing I won’t
have to deal with the same issues and the same people and the same questions
day after day. I can handle the grumpy
customers better and I just go in and do what I can but I don’t stress about
stupid bullshit any more. I do have
options other than termination but I’ll get into that in another entry. I’ll also get more into how I’m feeling as
my time in the department is coming to a close in another entry. I’ll also talk about the fallout from the
shake-up in another entry. This has
been long enough. Suffice it to say,
the bumbling rollout of this transition – from last fall to now – is pretty
typical of my company’s rollouts. They
seem incapable of doing anything coherently.
It’s truly an amazing feat for such a large company.
More soon from the frontlines...